🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Donald Trump is appealing a Colorado ruling that he engaged in insurrection after the 2020 election, risking an appeal court decision that could have him removed from the state's ballot.
District Judge Sarah B. Wallace ruled on Friday that Trump had incited the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, but that he could stay on the ballot for the 2024 presidential election. Trump and his opponents are appealing the decision, and the Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to hear the two appeals together.
The appeal court may accept the lower court's finding that Trump was an insurrectionist and thereby order that he be removed from the ballot under the 14th amendment of the U.S. constitution. That would kill Trump's chances of taking nine electoral college votes in Colorado in the 2024 election, a crucial swing state.
The anti-Trump plaintiffs filed their appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday in the hope of having his name removed from the ballot. The court agreed to hear the case on an accelerated timetable and Trump's lawyers must file a brief in the case by next Monday. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin on December 6.
"We are in uncharted waters. It's very unpredictable," Eric Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University, told CBS News on Tuesday.
Segall said that the Colorado Supreme Court is having to rule on areas of law that have never been decided before. He said the court is not finding the law, or interpreting the law, but "creating the law" because it is such a new area of jurisprudence.
Wallace found that Trump had engaged in insurrection during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but allowed him to remain on Colorado's primary ballot because it is unclear whether a Civil War-era constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.
Known as the disqualification clause, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that no person shall hold office if they have "previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States" and engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution.
The clause was enacted in 1868, after the Civil War, to keep former Confederates from holding state or federal office again, and remained in obscurity until a Congressional committee found that Trump had incited his supporters' Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump praised Wallace's decision while speaking to a crowd at a high school in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Saturday.
Democrats, their allies and the media, he claimed, are "having an absolute meltdown because last night, our campaign won a gigantic court victory in Colorado."
He criticized the lawsuit as "an outrageous attempt to disenfranchise millions of voters by getting us thrown off the ballot."
And he called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the watchdog group that filed the case on behalf of a group of Republican and independent Colorado voters, a "bunch of losers."
Biden beat Trump in Colorado in 2020, taking all nine electoral college votes. Trump's popularity has appeared to be growing since. In an Emerson College poll conducted in early October, Biden led Trump by 42% to 38%, a margin of four points. That margin has tightened since an Emerson College poll in September gave Biden a 10 point lead at 46% to Trump's 36%.
A spokesman for Trump, Steven Cheung, said in a statement after Wallace's ruling last week that it was "another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges."
About the writer
Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more